[DISCUSSION] Medical Pharmacy vs. Chemistry

[FireKestrel]

The whole "removing chemistry from science" thing that this PR seems to be preparing for has made be completely against any of this change. Research is a better fit for the experimental part of chem work, and it's also much better equipped. The front half of medical shouldn't be exploding just because someone wants to make secret chems, as having an actual important area of the station explode when a newbie inevitably messes up will lead to players getting annoyed and discourage them from engaging with those mechanics further. Just leave that in the department designed to be exploded.

I also really don't think medical needed another role, especially as a guaranteed additional slot on top of what they already had. I'd be happier if the amount of medical doctor slots were lowered by 1 to properly balance it.

[Kotlol]

Ooh boy this debate again.. do you know why we have pharmacy making chems? So science isn't burdened making chems all day for medbay.
Do you know why we have menders? So people do not throw beakers of stypic power and roll around in it.
Do you know why medbay is fast and snappy? So people do not take a minor injury or heavy one (wich is easy to do with some guns) and spend 10 minutes in medbay. Also so doctors do not get swamped having to deal with 10 patients dieing with only 3 doctors. If each patient has to spend 10 mins (bad example) in medbay healing... 10 patients divided by 3. Is around 3 1/3 patient per doctor wich equals around 33 mins total medbay work to keep 10 patients from dieing.

So what happens insted? They let some die and clone em insted. Or borg em. Cause they don't got time.

Let's be real here. As much as we want to redesigning medbay, medbay ain't the problem here. If we nerf medbay, you buff antagonists that take the violent route.
One shot of the a space shotgun will now put you out for a longer time due to longer treatment and doctors will be more willing to jump onto the cloning route.

And essentially if patients cannot do anything in medbay but "get healed" you can write them as <DEAD> in the game. Cause they sure as hell ain't interacting anywhere but be in medbay till they can leave medbay and do whatever it is they do.

What I notice is that people keep saying DEATH NEEDS TO MEAN MORE. But in truth, being unable to interact with anything is essentially DEAD too.
Being knocked out for 15 mins by gas? You were dead for 15 mins essentially, but not offically dead.

Anyway... I do think making pharmacy/chemistry it's own thing is a fine idea.. but science itself is just a huge problem. Toxins and Robotics are the least used and Robotics well... you think that's robotcist too... genetics is technically SCIENCE TOO but it's in medbay... If anything Science is so fractured and odd, yet working with medbay but not really is where the problems arrise.

As for medbay changes.. might I recommend something else? Rework the injury system. Right now you can shoot anywhere on the body but nothing will cause: "This arm is now broken, you cannot use it to fight." Insted you get: "Ow damage till someone blows your arm off."

If you want medbay to mean more, introduce more injuries and ways of dealing with things. Have arms be broken , but have medicine able to heal it fast or a slower methode. Have walking around with a broken arm slow you down or do minor brute damage over time unless you put it in a sling.
Lil things like this will improve medbays interaction without going the "we must nerf medbay route."

Cause as it is right now... there isn't much difference as shooting someone in the head, stomach or leg cept maybe armor and some organ damage.
But wouldn't it be cooler if, if you shoot someone in the leg a few times, that leg is broken and has to be healed, thus there are more tactical reasons to fight people?

Seriously though... I think the true problem of medbay being too boring/strong is more the lack of ways to make injuries mean something.
Insted of "Making death feel more impactful".. Make injuries more impactful.

Death removes a player from the game, Injuries make players have to make tough choices in the game. But as it stands now, you can get injured by something small, go to medbay and get healed. There is no interresting decission making as the injured then "You are injured, find a medic."
We need more "You are injured in such a way, do you head to medbay right away or do you deal with the injury and head there later?"
It would be cooler for interactions to decide: "I have almost no brute damage but my arm is broken, I can wear a sling and use one arm to finish it then heal at medbay."

THESE ARE THE DECISSIONS I WANT TO SEE!

[WantilaThor]

While I do not like how this will effect doctoring one way to make it somehow work would be adding extra chemmasters and reagent extractors to medbay for doctors to use so they can accually use botany plants and not need pharmacist to process them. This way pharmacist would just prepere the chem and doctors would prepere it for their use (pills, patches).

[Torchwick]

My actual feasible suggestion is to take the chemical dispenser out of the pharmacy, but keep the tools and machines that process chems. I think medical (and a pharmacist role) should be able to process the chemicals they get from other departments. This forces semi-reliance on chemistry and botany if they want the better meds, but doesnt take away from the way some maps and their pharmacies are laid out. Losing some of the cute front desk space (looking at you Kondaru) is a shame.

I think medical is far too self-reliant, and this doubles down on it by keeping chem production internal. People can already stabilize easily with the base chemicals, so I think forcing reliance on another department for optional, yet better meds, is better.

[GARGATHUGANOKSREVENG]

Insted of "Making death feel more impactful".. Make injuries more impactful.

not just more impactful but give us a bigger variety I think. more possibilities for different things to happen. though I think your idea about broken arms and stuff has merit and I've personally been thinking about limb damage mechanics as well

though goonstation is like the only popular codebase without limb/bodypart damage so I'm not sure how smoothly the change would go

[Lord_earthfire]

not just more impactful but give us a bigger variety I think. more possibilities for different things to happen. though I think your idea about broken arms and stuff has merit and I've personally been thinking about limb damage mechanics as well

There was a PR to add bones that can break.

Guess why it wasn't merged? Yeah, our system is so simple that it was too complicated to treat for a lot of people.

[witchkit]

I think medical is far too self-reliant, and this doubles down on it by keeping chem production internal. People can already stabilize easily with the base chemicals, so I think forcing reliance on another department for optional, yet better meds, is better.

i think this is the biggest issue with this change, as has been repeatedly brought up in this thread. making pharmacist a constant role and locking up the pharmacy sincerely just continues to erase med's need for chemistry, and decreases opportunities for interacting with other departments.
also, as mentioned many times as well, the base chems in the vendors are plenty to make it through a shift (and if you're running low/out, interact with cargo and order a restock). advanced chems are made pretty commonly by doctors looking for something to fill time while medbay is slow, but in the end, they aren't a requirement for the operation of med. these chems are optional, and i really think its better to remove the pharmacy and just. let science be interacted with. and yes, there is the issue of chem requests often going unnoticed/ignored, but i think that actively removing the pharmacy and making chemistry the only actual option for these advanced chems would encourage people to directly speak to science to get those requests fulfilled (instead of them just sitting silently in the request console).

even if the pharmacy wasn't completely removed, and was more in line with what jay mentioned in terms of removing the chem dispenser and keeping the tools/machines to process chems (like the extractor/chemaster) that come in from science/botany requests, that would probably be enough.